


for you (i'd war)

by keouil



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Gen, Uchiha Obito-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:13:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26443249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keouil/pseuds/keouil
Summary: i'd build an army if you need me to.
Relationships: Nohara Rin/Uchiha Obito
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	for you (i'd war)

**Author's Note:**

> half inspired by [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xfy6EwfrpQ) but mostly the general tragedy behind obito and rin.

_(no, really, obito didn’t start the fourth shinobi war because of rin._

_he started it **for** her.)_

* * *

for a young child born into prestige he didn’t understand exactly what for, obito didn’t have much to live for. 

his parents, as far as he knew, were practically non-existent and he was raised solely by his grandmother. he liked her enough, especially when she gave him strawberry-flavoured rice cakes during his birthday. and he can assume just as much that yes, maybe this warm feeling he got when the old grannie delivered her annual promise, _he can live for this._

and then one day one of the clan heads knocked on their door and asked if _there were any able-bodied uchiha boys living here and have they been enrolled to the academy yet?_ he saw the hesitance in grannie’s gaze when she glanced at him and remembered her pleading with the young man if he could _pass this time, he’s still too young,_ which only served to add to the man’s resolve further.

rules are rules, he reminded unsympathetically.

* * *

in school, he came to find that many people lived for many different things. 

his seatmate, a girl with weird markings on her face, seemed to not be able to part with her dog. he didn’t know pets were allowed in the academy. but any time he brought it up with their sensei he just smiled and said something about _in zoo cases_ being an exception. whatever that was, the girl seemed to take pride in it and he saw the life in her eyes whenever she talked about the mut. so he brushed it off, because who was he to question someone’s life purpose when he only had one so far?

then nohara rin happened.

without warning or reason, she came into his life one day and in that brief of a millisecond _he just knew_. he knew it in the way she always had a kind smile to offer to everyone, a never-ending supply of band-aids in the small medical kit she carried around, extra servings of warm food in her bento box just in case anyone wanted seconds, and most vividly - he knew it in the way she gave him jasmine tea packets because she knew his grandmother liked it.

 _oh,_ he thought, _this must be it._

* * *

no one was happier the day he found out he was going to be in a team with nohara rin. team minato, their blonde sensei had called them with a proud grin. he decided he liked the ring of that and not even the thought of being lumped together with his archnemesis was going to put a damper on his enthusiasm.

team minato, as he found out, was the only one with a proper medic. 

minato-sensei told them just how important that role was and he could feel it in the way he always shadowed her closest when they were in missions and made sure their battle strategies revolved around her being the designated survivor, if any at all. he didn’t quite understand why, but it added another layer of security he wasn’t clever enough to come up with himself and this way even the other guy would be forced to follow through.

except kakashi didn’t. 

almost every chance he got, he acted on his own self-interest and constantly left them behind even during training drills. it got so bad sensei had to sit him down and lecture him on the importance of teamwork, but obito was already furious. not at the fact kakashi has demonstrated time and time again his lack of care for him almost deliberately, but at rin. _because was he not listening? did he not know how important it was that she live?_

he concluded then and there his hatred for hatake kakashi ran bone-deep because it just got personal. if their then rivalry was born out of childhood pettiness and spite, then his refusal to care for anyone other than himself - _and rin, especially rin_ \- ran past immaturity and he found he had no reason to acknowledge his presence either.

he was perfectly content living his days with a three-man team.

until one mission when that same feud almost cost him his life were it not for kakashi and his stealth, that minato-sensei put his foot down and demanded the boys to end their strife. and it wasn’t until he was told of hatake sakumo and his heartbreaking story that obito would have still foolishly gone about his life hating the next closest thing he had for a friend.

he still didn’t like that kakashi didn’t like rin or anyone in particular, but he could go two conversations without wanting to fling him with a kunai, and considered that progress.

* * *

through it all, rin was still infuriatingly kind and unnervingly patient. 

she still packed extra to feed an army, because kakashi was too thin and obito ate for two and minato-sensei complained when he was ignored. she was a calming presence in their otherwise turbulent team dynamic and obito knows sensei knows because it was always by a stroke of luck he sent her out to do damage control just when kakashi was about to fireball him all the way to sand. 

rin is mediating, if not a little too gentle, but with nerves of steel she always summoned just in time when faced with danger - and obito was _absolutely enamored_.

but he also wasn’t blind (despite what most his classmates would say). he could clearly see what kakashi looked like in her eyes because that’s exactly how he saw her in his. she saw kakashi for the strength she could become and he saw rin for the light he desperately clung to for meaning **.**

* * *

for an ambitious boy given newfound purpose and will, he now had many reasons to live. 

he could live on being an important person protecting precious people (rin). he could live as the uchiha who was not really an uchiha for someone who never really cared for last names (rin). and most of all, he could live for her smile and bento boxes and band-aids and warmth and _god he needed that warmth this cave is always so cold just like her body when he held it in his arms as she lay dying and –_

his decision was final. the war has taken too much from him and he’ll be damned if he’ll allow the rest of history to play out in blissful ignorance and lest of all find happiness because why the hell should humanity be given a chance when they weren’t? 

he was a good person at his core and yet the world has still managed to work against him, them, _her_. the universe has been granting too much freedom to political bodies and power dynamics and _fucking tailed beasts_ and psychological warfare and _he just misses rin so fucking much_. 

* * *

for a forgotten man stripped of identity and dreams, he forges himself a new will from the ashes of his former self and hangs on the delicate gentleness he found in her light and promises there will be no more pain after this.

_i will create a world where you’re alive._


End file.
